Death row inmate asks for last-minute clemency after U.S. Supreme Court denies stay

CNN
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The US Supreme Court rejected it to stop the execution scheduled for Friday evening of a black inmate in South Carolina who claimed prosecutors wrongly excluded black people from the all-white jury that convicted him.

With the lethal injection trial set to begin at 6 p.m., Richard Moore's fading hope appears to be a plea for clemency from a Republican governor who two years ago, discussing Moore's case, said he would not commutation.

Gov. Henry McMaster will not announce his clemency decision until Friday at 5:45 p.m., he said Wednesday, noting: “The death penalty is a very serious decision, regardless of the circumstances.” That is a very permanent, very serious, terrible punishment, and it needs to be considered very, very carefully.”

McMaster told a reporter in 2022 about Moore's case: “I have no intention of commuting a sentence. The jury has made its decision.”

More than 20 people — including two jurors, the judge from Moore's original trial and a former director of the state prison system — have asked McMaster to save Moore's life by granting him clemency, The Associated Press reported.

“That's definitely a part of my life that I would like to change because I took my own life, you know? “I took someone’s life,” Moore says in a video released by his lawyers as part of his appeal for clemency.

Moore, 59, is the last person on South Carolina's death row to be convicted by a jury with no black members, his defense attorneys say. He would be the second person to be executed since the state reinstated the death penalty after a 13-year hiatus caused by difficulties obtaining drugs for its lethal injection protocol, a problem other states have faced.

Moore was convicted of killing white supermarket clerk James Mahoney during a 1999 robbery. Moore entered the Spartanburg County store unarmed and took away Mahoney's handgun. Mahoney then grabbed a second gun and shot Moore in the arm before Moore fired a fatal shot at Mahoney, prosecutors alleged.

Moore fled, taking a bag full of more than $1,400 in cash, they said.

Moore had alleged to the state Supreme Court that prosecutors improperly punished two black jurors because of their race in his 2001 murder case, which the state denied. South Carolina officials argued that Moore had already filed similar claims and lost, while also noting that one of his jurors was Hispanic. The Supreme Court rejected his request without comment on Thursday and no dissenting opinions were noted.

Defense attorneys have also argued that Moore killed Mahoney in self-defense. “No other death penalty case in South Carolina has involved an unarmed defendant who defended himself when the victim threatened him with a gun,” the statement said.

Moore's son, who was 4 at the time his father was charged, says his father deserves mercy.

“He is a person who has made mistakes,” Lyndall Moore told the AP. “And this particular mistake resulted in the death of another human being. But his punishment is disproportionate to the actual crime.”

South Carolina expanded execution methods

The Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that prosecutors could not convict a potential juror based solely on race. In the event of a challenge, the state must provide a “race-neutral” reason for disqualifying the candidate.

In the Moore case, prosecutor Trey Gowdy — who later served four terms as a Republican congressman — told the judge that the main reason he rejected a black jury candidate was that she tried to hide her criminal record during questioning while he chose to do so to exclude another candidate because that person's son was convicted of murder, the state wrote, denying Moore's request to the Supreme Court.

A white jury candidate whose close family member was also charged with murder was also affected for the same reason, Gowdy told the judge at the time. According to the state, at the trial court's request, Moore's attorney did not object to Gowdy's stated reasons at this time.

In a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Tuesday, South Carolina's attorney general argued that it was too late for Moore to raise the issue of juror race because it had not been mentioned in some previous appeals. Moore's lawyers responded Wednesday that the case's “unique procedural background” should allow the justices to consider their arguments.

CNN reached out to Gowdy for comment on Thursday. The attorney general's office and Republican governor's offices have not responded to CNN's request for comment on Moore's petition to the nation's highest court.

Moore was convicted of murder and armed robbery, among other charges, after the jury deliberated for two hours and sentenced him to death after just another hour of discussion, the Spartanburg Herald-Journal reported in 2001.

Moore chose execution by lethal injection, his lawyers say, after the dispute over South Carolina's access to lethal injection drugs led to McMaster signing a law in 2021 allowing the state to do so, including by electrocution or firing squad to be executed, with death row inmates being allowed this selection.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, more than 1,600 people have been executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. 34 percent were black, more than double the proportion of black US citizens in 2023.

As for the clemency request, McMaster intends to “examine everything I can in a timely manner,” the governor told reporters Wednesday.

In an earlier federal court request for a stay of execution, Moore's attorneys expressed concern about McMaster's previous comments on clemency for death row inmates, according to the ruling denying that request.

The statement, Moore's lawyers had argued, showed that McMaster could not make a fair decision on a clemency request because he would have to “forgo years of his own work” to support the death penalty as attorney general.

McMaster responded to the court: “It is and has been my intention and obligation to take care to understand the issues presented, including those arising from my review and consideration of applications, petitions and clemency applications submitted to me by or on behalf of them were presented.” a condemned prisoner…”